U.K. Patent Specification No. 314,843 describes a winding machine of considerable complexity in which wire is fed in respective loops on opposite sides of the axis of rotation in order to accommodate rotating and non-rotating parts of the machine. U.K. Patent Specification No. 1,011,699 describes a winding machine which is less complex but which employs a rotating wire feeding means. Moreover, it does not make provision for supplying a binding or positioning element down the inside of the coils of the filament wound on, and subsequently removed from a mandrel. U.K. Patent Specification No. 1,344,506 describes a winding machine having a rotating wire feed and which employs an assymetric mandrel to provide gravitational restraining means to prevent mandrel rotation.
The Provisional Specification of my British Patent Application No. 21642/76 describes non-rotating means to feed a wire filament to a single winding element. Such non-rotating means reduce even further the complexity of a winding machine.
The present invention seeks to improve the design of a winding machine still further, especially with regard to the requirements of (c) and (d) above.